Haiti continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 184

CHAPTER TWELVE
Haiti continued
HOW does an artistic renaissance begin? The great Italian movement of the fifteenth century needed the
destruction of an empire and the sack of the imperial city to set it in motion; an event scarcely less mo-
mentous in history than the fall of Troy. The minor but undeniably valid renaissance in the painting of
Haiti came into being through no more startling an event than the arrival, during the war, of an American
painter in Port-au-Prince to teach English at the Lycée Pétion.
As, a few years ago, sociologists were agreed that all traces of Haitian art were dead, there is something
akin to the miracle of Lazarus in the resurrection that has taken place. Mr. De Witt Peters received his first
hint of the existence of primitive painting in the Republic from the frescoes of brightly coloured birds and
fruit and flowers on the doors of a bar beside a country road. The quest for the disinterment of Haitian
primitive painting from this initial clue—a painted mug here, decorative designs on wood or cardboard
there, or a sudden efflorescence of colour on whitewashed walls in the remotest mornes —until the opening
of the Centre d'Art and the sudden constellation of painters and sculptors that have been summoned out of
oblivion or brought into being under its auspices, is an exciting story. [1]
For Haitian art, the authentic vernacular painting of the race, lulled by official ignorance of its existence
and the indifference of the élite , was not dead, but sleeping. The élite , faithfully reflecting in this their
equivalent in the French provinces whose appreciative scope stops dead at Ingres or David, are chary of
acknowledging anything in art that differs from the academical standards of a provincial bourgeoisie . The
aversion of the Mulatto aristocracy is increased by the obvious affinities of these paintings with the for-
bidden, the would-be-forgotten theme of Africa. For atavistic survivals of the plastic formulæ of Dahomey
are clearly detectable, and much of the wood carving displays uncomfortable reminders of Ashanti. The
policy of the present government, in line with its general tolerant attitude to Afro-Haitian tendencies, has
bestowed its support on the movement. But the wealthy men of Pétionville reserve their approval, and
(which is more to the point) their money, for paintings that resemble more nearly the standards of the Paris
Salon in their student days fifty years ago. Haitian primitive art thrives almost entirely on the encourage-
ment and the purchases of foreigners, and of a handful of Haitian intellectuals.
Fortunately, the artists belong, by the very nature of their work, to the humbler strata of Haitian
life—cobblers, bakers, tailors, part-time Houngans, and so on—and their modest financial demands are
amply satisfied from this source. The great success of their work at the Unesco exhibition in 1947 and of
those paintings which have been shown in New York, and the astonishment of travellers in Haiti have as-
sured them the respite from financial worry that creative work demands. The Centre d'Art is a permanent
exhibition of their works and, if they choose, a studio for them to work in. It is also a meeting-place from
which they can draw encouragement and, on occasions, advice. Under the wise direction of De Witt Peters
it has become not only an institution that enables these artists to live and work, but the impulse that has
unleashed the entire Haitian artistic revival. Its opening was, for the Republic, a miniature Fall of Byzan-
tium. Rodman records the reaction of André Breton when, on a visit to the island with Wilfredo Lam a
year after its inauguration, he bought a number of Hyppolite's paintings. 'This should revolutionize French
painting,' he is reported to have said; 'it needs a revolution.'